our public library image
We'll take this first week to introduce ourselves and to offer each other our image of the public library. Do the introductions by the means of a post on our blog. In the post, include the following items:
- your name (the name you wish to be addressed as) and any personal details you wish to share
- your hometown (in any way that you choose to understand the term "home town")
- pull out the public library card you have in your wallet and tell us about that library
- think back to the public library that had the most impact on
your personal development and tell us about it, covering these
topics (as appropriate)
- where was it?
- what made it special for you? ("special" doesn't have to mean it was a good experience; a library can have an impact on you because of bad experiences)
- what is the relationship between that library experience and the fact that you are taking this course now?
I will have created a post of my own to give you all an example of what I hope to see from you all.
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where our image is located
After our initial postings, we now know where we all developed the image we have of the public library.
View Larger Map to see locations even farther afield
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By way of introduction to the topic, you might find the next quote interesting. It caught my attention when I read in in The Economist on 30 November 2006.
The Edison of our age?
Stanford Ovshinsky may not be a household
name, but his inventions have the power to change the world ...
what lifts Mr Ovshinsky into the league of genius inventors is something
rather less common: success. He is the inventor of the nickel-metal
hydride (NiMH) battery, which is used to power everything from
portable electronics to hybrid cars; around 1 billion such batteries
are sold every year. He has also made advances in information
technology (he calls information "encoded energy") and holds
critical patents relating to thin-film solar cells, rewriteable
optical discs, a new form of non-volatile memory and flat-panel
displays. These technologies are being commercialised through deals
with Intel, Samsung, STMicroelectronics, General Electric, Chevron,
United Solar Ovonic, and others ...
All this makes it tempting to compare ECD's co-founder with Thomas Edison, the great inventor from
another age who founded General Electric. Both established
themselves early on not only as brilliant innovators, but inventors
with their feet firmly planted on the ground. Both arose from humble
roots: Edison was not born to privilege, while Mr Ovshinsky's father
collected scrap by buggy. Mr Ovshinsky did not even go to college,
and credits his vast knowledge of science to the public libraries of
his native Ohio. He likes to say, "invention comes to the prepared
mind."
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Why is this short item significant? It is significant to me for three reasons:
- it reminded me what public libraries most mean to me - a place to learn things without being told one has to do it
- it reinforces my personal belief that one can find truths in many different places
- and, that while wandering the stacks of the local library, one can discover things one never knew existed.
Of course, not everyone agrees with me, and not everyone has the same sense of the public library. But one of our hopes for this class is that we discover our collective and individual senses of the public library we know and that we develop a fuller, more nuanced image of the public library as we would hope it could become.
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